Managed DNS Services

Well its been a while since our last blog entry so we wanted to update everyone.

WE GOT UPGRADES!

We are proud to announce that on 11/27/2007 that we replaced both of the air filters in the heating units to our office. Yes it was a big deal and we are happy to say that no employees were injured during the upgrades. Also on a much less impressive note, we added two additional DNS servers to better serve our customers and increase reliability.

With 2008 around the corner we are hoping to update the blog more often. We have some big things on the way for 2008. Just to give you a hint, it begins with an “A” and ends with a “T”.

We had a good run in Las Vegas and met a lot of great people but it is time to escape the heat. No-IP has relocated its corporate headquarters to Reno, NV. See ya Las Vegas, Hello Reno!

Our new corporate contact info is as follows.

9585 Prototype Ct Suite A
Reno, NV 89521
775-853-1883 phone
775-853-1886 fax

Recently No-IP has disabled all dns updates from D-Link routers to our main website www.no-ip.com. Over the past 3 years No-IP has supported the ability of these routers to perform updates to our dynupdate.no-ip.com host. We also allowed updates for people that incorrectly configured their router to point at www.no-ip.com. Unfortunately, traffic from these routers constitutes 50% of the requests our website receives and actions must be taken to reduce the impact from these misconfigured routers.

If you are using a D-Link router as your update client, please verify that your “Server Address” is dynupdate.no-ip.com and NOT www.no-ip.com. Also take the time to verify you still have the correct email address for the username and correct password and are running the most recent version of firmware for your router.

Users currently performing updates through www.no-ip.com will receive a “too many updates” error response. Adding salt to the wound, older D-Link routers do not listen to response codes (hence the insane amount of traffic) so at some point in the future we may begin blocking these at the connection level.

More information on configuring your D-Link router can be found over here.

A recent batch of malware has been targeted at users of the Skype VOIP phone service. Apparently the malware made use of a No-IP hostname (nsdf.no-ip.biz). No-IP received notification of this early on the 18th and promptly disabled the account and DNS host of the user that developed the malware. All logs related to this users account have been preserved and will be handed over to law enforcement for prosecution. More information regarding this Skype virus can be read at The Register and over at F-Secure and Symantec.

Please note that you should never click on suspicious links or run executables (.exe files) from unknown sources. Also, please be sure to update your virus scanning software frequently and run it often.

Earlier today ordb.org announced that it is discontinuing the Open Relay Database. The maintainers have moved on noting that blocking open relays just isn’t what it used to be. For No-IP Anti-spam Policies, this was a default list for the Aggressive, Strong, and Moderate presets. It has been removed from these as well as domains that had it as a customized selection. We are sorry to see ORDB go, but we look forward to what new enterprises their loosed time shall beget.

The success of the Anti-spam Policies addition has been staggering. Spam and spam scores are down an almost inconceivable amount. Customer’s inboxes are cleaner and so are ours! Reflector and Backup MX users should see better relay times when they have been offline for awhile due to the smaller queues (70% smaller!). We are currently blocking over one MEEHLLIAHN spam messages per day on mail1.no-ip.com alone, and that doesn’t even include what is filtered with greylisting. This has been a win for everyone, so thanks for putting up with our dust during the transition!

As time goes on we’ll be adding more options to the policies list. To get the ball rolling we’ve added the NJABL. This is an excellent list that is used in part by the Spamhaus XBL. It provides further protection with over 115MB of IP addresses! It is now part of the default for Aggressive and Strong presets. And for those pop3 users who do not enable NJABL, we’ve added custom spam scoring to this new list. The added score should help flag any spam that makes it through the Anti-spam Policies system and aids your local filters in keeping the bad messages out of your way. So read about the NJABL and start using it!

Spam is up, big time. Market reporters say spam has increased as much as 59% in the past two months and 120% from last year. We’ve noticed and we are sure you have too. So we put our heads together and came up with a solution to protect all of our email services, from Backup MX to POP3, included at no extra charge. It’s called Anti-spam Policies and this is how it works.

Log into No-IP.com and click on Mail in the left-hand navigation. Then click Modify for your domain, followed by Anti-spam Policies. You will be presented with a grid of policies on the left and presets across the top. To start, everyone has the “Minimal” setting, equivalent to our previous protection. This includes the No-IP.com custom blacklist, SpamCop, sender validation, and now greylisting(!). Other policies include the venerable Spamhaus.org SBL-XBL, SORBS, dsbl, ORDB and the Bogus MX list from RFC-Ignorant.org.

Probably the most exciting addition is greylisting. Basically, greylisting perform tests to make sure the message is coming from a real mail server and not an infected machine or spam operation. You can read more about greylisting in our guides. Currently, greylisting is in a training mode. On December 4th we will turn it on for all policies that use it.

We recommend you step up your protection to “Moderate.” I personally have been using the “Moderate” setting for three weeks on my account and have seen my amount of spam cut by 75%. Previously I was receiving about 65 spam emails per day. Now I get around 15 per day. And I haven’t had a single complaint from my friends, family, or business associates! When greylisting goes full-bore, I expect to have days where not a single spam message reaches my inbox.

And remember, this is for ALL email services, Forwarding and POP3, Reflector and Backup MX. So take a look, even if you don’t plan on changing anything. Someday you may need to!

Around 10:00 AM PST, No-IP we reached 4 million signups.  That means that we have had one million additional new users join our site in the last ten months.  We attribute this growth to the ever demanding need for Dynamic DNS services that we provide.  In the last year we have made improvements to our site and added support for multiple languages.

This tremendous growth wouldn’t be possible without the support of our loyal customers who recommend us to their co-workers, friends, and family: Thanks for making us 4 million strong!

Oh and don’t forget our referral program! Refer three friends to our paid services and get a free year of Managed DNS.

Today No-IP was officially accredited by the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Our official ICANN registrar name is “Vitalwerks Internet Solutions, LLC DBA No-IP”.

What does this mean? Currently, No-IP resells domain registrations through SRSPlus. Now that we have our ICANN accreditation we have the ability to directly sell domains through the various registries such as .com,.net, and .org.

Why does it matter? Being able to interface directly with the registries means we will have more control over the domain registration process. There will be less delay in processing inbound zone transfers, faster lookups while searching for available domains, and overall a better end-user experience from support to managing your domains.

When is this going to happen? We anticipate development to begin on the new registry system within the next month. If all goes as planned No-IP will begin using its own registrar API in the first part of 2007. As we progress we will keep everyone posted as to where we are in the process.

How will this affect my service? This change will be pretty much transparent. Once implemented all new domain registrations and transfers will go through the new No-IP registrar system. Existing domain names will be transferred over from SRSPlus to No-IP when they are up for renewal. This process will be detailed in an email when you renew your domain name.

This is a big step for No-IP and we look forward to being your one stop shop for managing your domain name.

The FAQ is now available in Portuguese!

We hope that this will help our Portuguese speaking customers receive a higher level or support and understanding of our services. We will continue to add support for other languages to our FAQ and to the rest of site in the near future.